Pastor Tim Keller famously observed in The Reason for God that when Christians sin, our own Scriptures rebuke and reform us. This is doubly true in Anglicanism, with our unapologetically hierarchical structures. The Archbishop of our Province oversees and cares for Bishops. Bishops of Diocese oversee and care for Presbyters and Deacons. Presbyters and Deacons oversee and care for lay members of the local church. And lay members often oversee and care for lay ministry teams such as Altar Guild, Greeters, Hospitality and Lay Readers.
When accusations, misconduct or both erupt in the life of the church, we cannot plead ignorance with Peter saying, “I do not know the man” (Matthew 26:72). We are too interwoven. This is our family. We are invested. Callousness, despair, denial, and ignorance will not work. In our age of disconnect, loneliness and isolation, our interconnectedness is a good and rare blessing. Pain reveals we care. When Jesus says, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39), our “neighbors” surround us in Anglicanism on a global scale. We should not run from our interconnectedness. We should embrace and increase it.
Humans did not create hierarchical interconnectedness. Its logic originates in the order of creation and continues in the Christian Scriptures. When parents conceive children and those children have children, we are witnessing interconnected hierarchy at work. Have you heard an overwhelmed parent say to their disobedient child, “Would you like your children one day to treat you how you’re treating me?” What is this, if not an appeal for justice based on hierarchically interconnected family relationship?
The same holds true for employer – employee relationships in Matthew 18:23-35. A king forgives a mid-level servant’s debt. When the mid-level servant harshly requires immediate repayment of a much smaller debt from his lower-level servant, news travels back to the king. The interconnected hierarchical nature of this relationship quickly reveals the mid-level servant’s injustice, when contrasted with the king’s mercy.
Foundational to these appeals for justice is Jesus’ expansion on the second greatest commandment, commonly called The Golden Rule. “Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 7:12). What would happen if we applied The Golden Rule to each canon, each policy, each process, each opportunity for agency, communication, or representation? I suspect mutual love, understanding and justice would increase, while actions, structures, or processes inconsistent with The Golden Rule would create noticeable dissonance.
Granted each level of Anglican governance has asymmetries as well as symmetries, unique prerogatives as well as shared duties. But the more each level—the laity, deacons, presbyters, bishops and archbishops—can look at each other and say, “Yes, that’s what we would have done or want done to us,” the more we will be walking in obedience to Jesus, practicing Biblical justice, honoring one another, and bearing witness to the truth of the gospel before a curious world.